


A Game of Cat and Mouse

by noodleincident2001



Category: Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-10 00:47:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7823674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodleincident2001/pseuds/noodleincident2001
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mad Love in the Ayer-verse. After a brutal scuffle with the Bat, Joker's locked up in Arkham again, only this time, he's got a few more challenges to deal with. Namely, a pretty blonde psychiatrist who won't put up with his shit, and several other inmates and doctors who want to use him for their own ends. Set in Arkham Asylum and tracing Joker and Harley's relationship up through the Suicide Squad film. My first fic in a long time—Please read and review!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story doesn't have a beta, so please forgive any typos that may still be in here. I do my best to edit my stuff but mistakes still slip through. 
> 
>  
> 
> Characterizations for these two is tough, especially considering that we don't see much of J in the SS film, so I've thrown in some other elements to him. Hopefully he seems Joker-y enough.
> 
> Artistic license with medical procedures and such. I'm not a doctor but hopefully this isn't too cringey for any person who wants to read this fic and is in the medical profession. But a warning: it's still probably really cringey. Sorry.
> 
> Not sure if I'll continue with the fic. I have ideas but my life gets busy very quickly, so it all depends on the responses. If it seems like people don't really like it, I'll shelve the project.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading this: hope you enjoy!

Joker screwed his eyes shut. Fluorescent lights always gave him headaches, and staring at the ceiling wasn’t helping. He tried to roll over to his side but the restraints across his body kept him in place. He gagged at the sensation of the feeding tube the docs had shoved through his nose and down his throat. He was still too dangerous to be allowed to eat on his own, unrestrained, so the shrinks kept him stiff and immobile. They even had him on a catheter. Joker grinned: it was some sick, twisted torture out of the Dark Ages; he’d have to keep it in mind for later use once he got out. Sighing, he traced his tongue over the new metal in his mouth. His old pal Batman really did a number on him this time, curb stomping his head into the ground and breaking half of his teeth while kicking out the rest. By the time the Bat was done, Joker’s mouth looked like a fucked up Dali sculpture: surreal, dada-esque. _Damaged_.

 

Bats made sure to break his ribs and jaw for good measure, too. A full-body beat down. It was funny—his ever-moral nemesis finally, _finally_ cracking, and over something so minor, too, just a good-natured threat to the new punk sidekick that Batty-Bats had crusading around with him these days, even younger and more fresh-faced than the one before—well, it _was_ funny…until Bats decided to fuck up everything by quittin’ the abuse before he actually got the joke, and dropped Joker off at Gotham General, where the cops promptly handcuffed him to an E.R. bed. There, he had been poked and prodded at for hours before, finally, a doctor on his payroll managed to sneak him into the O.R. to do some emergency work on his teeth. Thus: the grill. He’d been planning on doing something with his teeth for purely aesthetic purposes, anyway; the Bat simply forced his hand. Now that wasn’t so funny.

 

Joker groaned: his jaw still felt sore and his ribs smarted every time he struggled against his bonds. Despite having most of Gotham’s cops and docs under his influence, he still ended up at Arkham, where apparently everyone who used to be on his payroll had been unceremoniously replaced since his last visit. So after a goddamn week, he was _still_ at Arkham, not busted out, staring at the ceiling. Worse, the quack docs had him on a fucked up drug medley of anti-psychotics—which, fucking useless—and detox meds, roaring through his bloodstream thanks to the needle of an IV drip. No pain meds, though; too close in composition to the heroin they were forcing him to kick, is what he thought he heard a doc say. He couldn’t be sure that’s what they _really_ said though; his thoughts were fuzzier and more fucked up than even _he_ was accustomed to at the moment. Batsy had gotten him good. The Joker yawned, wincing at the soreness in his gums and choking on the feeding tube.

 

It had been seventy-two hours since he had last slept. Not that he normally slept much, anyway, what with his mind constantly buzzing and burning with plans and pain and his ears ringing with sounds that only he could hear. The exhaustion was finally starting to wear on him, though, and yet he couldn’t shut his eyes. He felt nauseous and wondered what would happen should he vomit: forced to lie on his back, would he drown in his own puke? Joker laughed, wincing as his ribs spread and crunched. Doctors, bound to the Hippocratic oath to “do no harm,” killing their patient by forcing him to detox and stay on his back. The moral high and mighty revealing themselves for who they really were: cowards. Now _that_ was hilarious.

 

Another wave of nausea rolled through him and he clenched his fists. His chest felt tight and his skin suddenly turned slick with sweat. Bugs started crawling along his arms and stomach, their tiny legs tickling him until they sank their pincers into his flesh. He shut his eyes again. No use: he could still feel the bites and the burrowing, the hundreds of tiny maws eating him alive. Joker wanted to laugh—the bugs looked like bats—but breathing had become immensely difficult and he couldn’t catch enough air. Darkness quickly began to take over his vision. Fucking detoxing. Oh yeah, he was _definitely_ going to kill every doctor in this place—

 

_kill every… sing l e_

_o ne_


	2. Chapter 2

Dr. Harleen Quinzel eyed the patient her and the other interns were set to observe today: the Clown Prince of Crime himself, the Joker. Even though a sea of white coats surrounded him, administering CPR, Harley saw his pale abdomen, mottled with black and blue bruises. _Multiple broken ribs_ , she mused. Then, with a small smile, _that ought’a hurt_. In the background, she heard the telltale beeping of a V-fib rhythm coming from the EKG, where erratic spikes traced the lines of a heart that desperately quivered but refused to pump.

 

“Charged, everyone clear!” a doctor—probably Cushing, from the sound of his voice—shouted.

“Clear!”

 

Defibrillator shock one. Yelling, shuffling, cursing—the sounds of Arkham’s emergency room. Joker’s pale chest leapt up from the bed, body freed from leather restraints and coursing with electricity. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Still no pulse.

 

She frowned; the Joker was the first somewhat interesting patient to come into Arkham in over a year. She was just on the cusp of finishing her internship and beginning her first-year residency, and it looked like the object of her ambition would die before she ever got a chance to speak with him.

 

“C’mon, you damn clown. Hit him again. Clear!” Another jump from the bed, but that’s all there was. Harleen crossed her arms. _This is all you’ve got, Joker? I want that book deal, damn it._

 

On the third try, the last try, Dr. Cushing and his team proved successful. Harleen heard a pained gasp and then a sickening crunch before the orderlies were able to pin the Joker down and restrain him again. When the orderlies were finished with tightening the last of the Joker’s ankle bonds, the attending psychiatrist, Dr. Joan Leland, called Harleen and the others to move closer.

 

What Harleen first noticed were his eyes: pale blue orbs that burned with the rage of caged predator. His eyes reminded her of ice; they were piercing and frigid, and with his lack of eyebrows, downright nightmarish. Alarmed by her sudden fear of him, she quickly looked away from his face, noting that his breathing was still very labored. Indeed: his chest rose and fell too quickly and his exhalations were too shallow. His steel blue eyes kept darting around the room, unable to focus on a single point.

 

“Well, here he is, kids, the Joker,” Dr. Cushing sneered, patting Joker’s forehead. “Welcome back to the land of the living, asshole.”

 

Harleen noticed how the profile of Dr. Cushing’s nose had changed—the Joker must’ve broken it while Cushing and the rest of his team did their best to restrain him before the orderlies arrived. For all that, Dr. Cushing stayed dangerously close to the Joker, still lightly patting his head, obviously confident that the restraints would hold.

 

The Joker grinned, revealing swollen, bleeding gums and a set of teeth covered in silver caps. _That dental work is recent,_ Harleen realized. Before anyone could stop him, the Joker headbutted Dr. Cushing square on the nose. _CRUNCCHHH!_

“ _Fuck!_ ” Dr. Cushing screamed.

 

Blood from Dr. Cushing’s ruined nose landed on the Joker’s lips, which he promptly licked. As Dr. Cushing bled and groaned and cursed in pain, the Joker began laughing: slowly, a low, malicious and insincere sound erupted, mixed with clear gasps of discomfort, and very quickly developed into chortles as Dr. Cushing continued to hold his nose and protest.

 

So the Joker broke the Dr. Cushing’s nose twice. Harleen had to suppress a giggle.

 

“Enough, Joker,” Dr. Leland ordered, pressing a button on the IV machine, causing the Joker’s laughter to near immediately stop and his eyes to roll back into his head. Harleen bit the inside of her cheek; it wasn’t a pretty sight. Dr. Leland turned to Cushing, who was still nursing his broken, and now bleeding, nose. “Dr. Cushing, go get yourself looked at.”

 

“Fucking hell, Joan.” Cushing shook his head. “Arkham doesn’t pay me enough for this bullshit,” he muttered, storming off.

 

As Harleen looked back over the Joker, she couldn’t help but notice that the skin surrounding the IV in his arm looked particularly red and swollen. Infected, even.

 

“Dr. Leland, what kind of medication is the patient on?” Harleen suddenly asked. “Anything else intravenous besides sedatives and the saline drip?”

Immediately, she saw the Joker lock his eyes on her, boring into and through her. She bit the inside of her cheek again, steeling herself. She had the distinct, unsettling impression that he was staring at her neck, looking at her pulse. Even sedated, his predatory gaze burned with all of the power of the sun behind his eyes, focused to an infinitely fine laser point—and that point, being, her. She felt trapped: he was a predator, a panther stalking his kill, and she was an injured prey. She set her jaw. The Joker, as interesting as he was from a potential book-selling standpoint, was merely an eccentric gangster with a personality disorder (or two, or maybe three) who had a knack for pleading insanity; she’d dealt with worse people. She could handle him. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he began to close his eyes as the sedatives worked into his system, and she relaxed as she watched him finally lose consciousness.

 

“Haven’t read the chart, Dr. Quinzel?” Of course Harleen had already read her (incomplete) copy of the Joker’s medical chart and knew which medications he’d been prescribed. She also knew that the combination of drugs Dr. Leland and the other psychiatrists gave him had the potential to cause serious heart side effects, and so their administration needed to be monitored closely. Still, something about his reaction was…off. Dr. Leland continued, “Methadone tablets for detox symptoms and paliperidone for schizophrenia, which no doubt caused the patient’s reaction. Nothing intravenously administered besides the saline and the sedatives we just gave him. We’ll have to ease up on the methadone dosage or nix it altogether.”

 

 _No intravenous meds besides the sedatives._ His chart said as much, but the redness on his arm still gave her pause. Harleen narrowed her eyes. She knew the stench of foul play very well, learned it from her old man growing up, and the Joker’s cardiac arrest reeked of it. It wasn’t like she had any proof, oh no—but something deep down in her gut made her suspect that this incident was the result of someone trying to actively kill the clown without getting caught. After all, no one would miss the Clown Prince, Gotham’s most infamous and feared Mafioso—and occasional terrorist.

 

No one except Dr. Harleen Quinzel.

 

_Nobody kill him just yet; I need that book deal._

 

“Yes, Dr. Leland, but I—“

 

“The patient is otherwise healthy,” another intern piped up. His name was Tony Refn, and he liked to think that he was God’s Gift to Psychiatry. He also made it clear that he was quite interested in Harleen on numerous, infuriating occasions. And, although her stomach churned at the thought of it now, Harleen briefly considered acquiescing to his desire for a relationship. Sure, with his chiseled good looks and his prestigious family, dating him—hell, probably marrying him, if she’s honest with herself—would’ve been another smart chess move in the game of life. She wouldn’t have to be sincere in her feelings, either; she’d be a pretty trophy wife and provide him with sex, meanwhile he’d provide her with the means and avenues to further her career. And besides, it’s not like she hadn’t used sex to get her way before; hell, that’s how she got through her undergrad years! Really, being with Tony would’ve been perfect, but he was just so damn… _boring_. He had all the personality of plain yogurt. Even his good looks appeared as though they’d been produced in some factory where they made slightly different variations of the same milquetoast man. One conversation with Tony, and Harleen knew she would’ve either killed herself, or him, or them both, had they’d entered into a long-term relationship together. She decided that she didn’t need him to further her ambitions; she could do well enough without him, thank you very much.

 

“Well, mental illnesses and drug addiction aside,” Tony continued, “Estimated age of thirty-five to forty, BP consistently reads 106/63, even when agitated. Resting heart rate is typically 43 bpm. Thirteen percent body fat, too, so he’s quite fit. I imagine all those run-ins with Batman keep him spry, ha ha. Okay, not funny. I get it. Sorry. Um…his lipid panel is immaculate as well.”

 

“What’s your point, Refn?” Dr. Leland snapped.

 

“Well, what I was getting at, and what I think Dr. Quinzel was getting at, is that this reaction seems…odd.”

 

“What are you suggesting, Refn? That someone at this facility attempted to kill the patient?” Dr. Leland raised an eyebrow, incredulous. “You’ll see, if you look at your copies of his chart, that the patient has a well-documented use of opiates, namely heroin, which can cause heart issues, regardless of the patient’s overall health, as I’m sure you know. And, though the chart does not mention the obviously new surgical dental work—and I can’t fathom _why_ —” she said, rolling her eyes, “the stress of the surgery, along with the stress of multiple broken ribs, are also factors to consider. Bottom line: the clown has been through a huge amount of physical trauma within the last week. Him having a reaction like this to the medication is quite understandable.”

 

“But is it really out of question that someone would try to kill the guy?” Tony persisted, giving Harleen a look. She was angry with him for stealing the point she wanted to make, and he knew it.

 

Dr. Leland wrinkled her nose, looking over the Joker’s face with her lips twisted in an expression that Harleen could only describe as loathing. “No, Dr. Refn, I suppose not. I’ll speak with Dr. Crane and have the guards look over the security tapes to see if anyone may have been tampering with his medication or administration thereof.” After a long pause, Dr. Leland sighed, examining the feeding tube sticking out of the Joker’s nose. “All right,” she said, turning to face the interns once again. “That’s enough for today. Go to your appointments. Dr. Quinzel?”

 

Harleen paused before leaving out the door with the rest of the interns. “Yes, Dr. Leland?”

 

“Come with me to my office; I’d like to speak with you.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

“I say we leave ‘im there to rot. We’ve already got everything we need; this could be the start of a new era in Gotham, Frost. We don’t need ‘im.”

“You better keep your mouth shut about leaving the Boss in that shithole before I shoot your ass, Jenkins.” Frost massaged his temples. God, they were so fucked. _He_ was so fucked. The Boss had gotten the shit beaten out of him and thrown away into Arkham—again—only, this time, they had no contacts on the inside. Every single employee had been replaced since the Boss’s last visit, leaving Frost no immediate way to bust him out.

 

“Just shoot him, Jonny,” Rocco said, leaning back in his chair. “It’s not worth keepin’ disloyals around. Shit. I fold. I hate playing cards with you guys.”

 

“C-c’mon, guys,” Jenkins said, pulling at his collar nervously, “it was just a suggestion. There’s no way to bust the Boss out of Arkham right now, unless we do a full-on assault. Y’all know that’d bring the Bat and we’re not exactly in the best position to—“

 

The air cracked as a gunshot rang through it, and the acrid smell of gunpowder saturated the dark room.

 

“Dammit, Frost, his blood got on my shirt. I just bought this shirt.”

 

“Shut it, Henshaw, or you’re next.” Frost put his gun on the table, started rubbing his temples again. He couldn’t believe what happened, honestly.

 

It’d just been a run-of-the-mill business deal with Sionis, a sort of peace offering, really. Joker wanted the chemicals from Sionis’ steel mill, and Sionis wanted drugs. Lots and lots of drugs—and guns. The plan was to take care of Sionis with explosives later, at his very own home and hideout with his girlfriend still there, and retrieve both the guns and the drugs back afterwards. The Boss had it all figured out, like he always did, and things were running perfectly.

 

That is, until, Batman showed up. Frost still wasn’t sure if Batman wasn’t actually a demon (but if the Bat was a demon, what did that make the Boss? Frost shuddered; he didn’t want to know): he’d taken out all of Sionis’ security detail—fifteen huge, competent don’t-fuck-with-me guys—in a matter of seconds. He left the Joker’s crew alone, though, and Sionis took off running. Frost knew this shit was personal.

 

The Boss started laughing, a real sick one this time, not the usual slow one that crawled under your skin, but a kind of unhinged chuckle that took a knife to your ears and cut them off.

 

“Batsy! So nice of you join us.” The Boss raised his hands in the air theatrically, gold chains glittering in the low, fluorescent light of the docks. “I was starting to wonder when you’d show up to liven up my nights. It’s been no fun without ya, honeybun.” The Boss said everything with that strange, singsong lilt of his, and Frost was sure he heard a low purr when the Boss said “honeybun.” Frost swallowed hard; _God_ —sometimes the Boss really made his skin crawl.

 

“Save it, Joker. I’m taking you in.”

 

“Wha?” The Boss leaned forward, placing his hand to his ear. “What’s that, Batty-boo? You’re gonna hurt me, you’re gonna reign me in?” He stood up again, flashing his immaculately white smile. “I’m all yours, babe. That is, ah, if you can catch me.”

 

Batman didn’t move. He was watching.

 

Waiting.

 

The Boss was still smiling when he approached Frost. Nothing put him in a good mood like when he was about to have a one-on-one showdown with the Bat. Not fucking hookers, not doing drugs or making fuckloads of cash. Not even torturing the family of an upstart crime boss.

 

Just the Goddamn Batman.

 

“Jonny Jonny, throw me the crowbar, would you?”

 

Frost did as he was asked, carefully watching Batman with his finger balanced on the trigger of his gun if the Bat decided to pull anything. He was only kidding himself, he knew; the Bat would mop the floor with Frost and the rest of the Boss’s crew just like he did with Black Mask’s. It was a force of habit, Frost figured. Watch the Boss’s back and you had a higher chance of staying alive when the Boss was in one of his moods. Not that it was by any means a guarantee, but Frost had lasted five years working for the guy, a downright miraculous amount of time in this business, especially considering that he worked for the Joker, so he wasn’t about to change his strategy now.

 

The Boss pulled off his silver blazer, handing it to Rocco. “Watch this for me, chubs,” he said, lightly slapping Rocco’s cheek. “You got it, Boss.”

 

Thunder roared in the distance. Frost blinked; a fat drop of water landed on his cheek.

 

The Boss laughed. “Gotham always loves to bless us with romantic weather, doesn’t it, Batsy?” He twirled around the crowbar, and Frost thought he looked like a fancy musical composer. Fancy and murderous; that was the Boss. His blood red lips frowned. “Not talkative today, eh, Batsy? Don’t tell me you’re still upset with me over the commissioner’s kid. I thought you’d gotten over that pretty quickly, big, strong man that’cha are. Why, you’ve even got a new boy-wonder; you can’t be that shaken up, surely.” Lightning flashed and the Boss smiled. “Then again, I could arrange a similar situation for your new nubile sidekick.”

 

Rain started to pour down as the Boss stepped towards the Bat, gently twirling the crowbar as he walked. Lightning flashed again, this time right up above, and as the world turned white and thunder roared, the Boss attacked, cackling maniacally and swinging the crowbar in a blind, almost giddy rage. It was downright magnificent to watch.

 

The Bat was a large man in every respect. Not the biggest guy Frost had ever seen, nah, but tall and well muscled and decked out in bulletproof body armor. Everyone knew about his combat prowess—you didn’t fuck with the Bat unless you were insane. Or equally dangerous. Frost felt a small smile pull at his lips; the Boss was both. For however physically imposing Batman was, the Boss was quick and agile. The man moved like a cobra, swaying and lightly dancing on his feet and appearing unbalanced with every movement, and Frost knew that while his swings with the crowbar may have looked wild to an outsider, his strikes against Batman were precise.

 

The rain kept pouring and the fight kept going, lightning illuminating the Boss’s drenched clothes as he swung and evaded the Bat’s strikes. Gotham’s Clown Prince and Dark Knight danced for what seemed like hours, engaged in a brutal tango of masochism and sadism as the sky above drenched them all. Suddenly, there was a gasp of pain and Frost smiled. The Boss had gotten the Bat good; real, real good, hitting him in the nuts and in the side of the head with such brutality that even Batman’s expensive body armor couldn’t keep the pain from causing him to double over. This was it, the moment they’d all been waiting for, when the Boss would finally kill the Batman and rid this city of the flying rat forever. Frost’s grip on his gun relaxed. The Boss was going to win: Batman was on his hands and knees, barely even able to hold himself up, and the Boss was savagely beating the last of his strength out of him.

 

“That’s right, bleed for me, Batsy,” the Boss sneered, smashing the crowbar over Batman’s head. “Bleed for me like the commissioner’s daughter. Bleed for me like your sidekick will. I can’t wait to tell your new boy-wonder that you won’t be able to save him when I—“

 

Something changed. Lightning flashed again, blinding Frost, and when he could finally see, the Bat’s hand was on the crowbar, firmly keeping it in place.

 

Frost didn’t think after that, he just shot and kept shooting at the Bat until a sharp batarang flew directly towards his face and only by a miracle pierced through just his hands. Henshaw got a batarang to the eye and the others got hit with tranq shots from the Batman’s car. Everyone besides the Boss was down for the count now, besides the Boss himself. Still, the Boss wasn’t so lucky in this regard, either. Somehow, Batman had managed to pull the crowbar away from the Boss’s grip, and Frost heard something snap and crunch as the crowbar landed squarely on the Boss’s jaw and sent him literally flying backwards and into the wall of one of the warehouses. Frost thought he saw teeth flying out of the Boss’s mouth and winced. What else exactly happened, he couldn’t be sure; he felt the tranq dart hit his neck for a second before his vision went dark. As the world spun and thunder crashed in his ears, Frost caught the image of the Bat smashing the Boss’s face in with a crowbar. After that, everything went black.

 

 

_Fucking Bat._

Frost slammed his fist on the table, startling Rocco and Henshaw. They needed to get the Boss out of Arkham, and fast.

 

“What’s up, Jonny? You got a plan?”

 

Frost wasn’t much for forming plans. He was a follower, not a leader; he stuck by the word of his Boss and did whatever he was asked. But the Boss wasn’t here, and Frost knew that they needed to get him out quickly, so a plan began to ever so slowly formulate in his mind, cogs and wheels turning in a direction he hadn’t used in a long, long while. “We need guys on the inside of Arkham,” he said, grabbing his gun. “Let the fucked up dogs off their leashes and get their crazy asses locked up there; it’s time to bust the Boss out.”


	4. Chapter 4

Harleen held his chart to her chest tightly, as if she were afraid that it might disappear before she reached her destination. She couldn’t believe this was happening: she was going to have a one-on-one session with the Joker! Now that he was off the feeding tube and more or less recovered from his ordeal in the E.R., the Joker needed a permanent psychiatrist assigned to him. And Harleen was that person, despite all odds. Not Tony, not Dr. Crane, not Dr. Lax— _her_. After months of working with nearly catatonic depressives or deranged serial killers like Barton Mathis and Victor Zsasz, she finally had a chance to take a crack at the Joker, the king of Gotham’s criminal underworld. She’d been the first one on Dr. Leland’s list, too.

 

Dr. Harleen Quinzel wasn’t just a pretty face who fucked her way through the tough courses in undergrad; she was damn good at what she did. Now, after all her hard work, years of med school and specialty training, and she would finally have the opportunity to make it big. _Take that, Tony._ She had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from squealing with delight. She didn’t even have to fuck Leland or Arkham.

 

She stopped in front of the metal door, straightening her glasses and composing herself.

 

“Ma’am,” the guard called to her. “He’s ready for you, locked up and secure. You just press the red button beneath the desk if he tries anything fishy, all right?”

 

She gave a warm smile to the guard. “Thanks, sweetie. I’m ready to go in.”

 

The guard nodded. “Luck, ma’am.” She could tell from his tone that there was an implicit, “You’re going to need it” at the end of that sentence. Harleen shook her head. She could do this.

 

She _would_ do this.

 

The great metal door creaked as it slid open, revealing a gray, depressing room with harsh lighting. _Great venue,_ she thought, slightly annoyed. But then she saw _him_ , hair electric green and vibrant, and she felt giddy again.

 

She walked to the seat across from him, doing her best to keep her back straight when she heard him whistle. “Well, well, well,” he said, and she could hear the wolfish grin in his voice even with her back turned. “I would’ve gotten myself locked up in here sooner if I’d known that the view would be this good.

 

“Hey, now, I recognize you. You’re that pretty doctor from the other day. The one with the nice neck.”

 

Harleen could feel the heat rising in her cheeks. _“He’s a master manipulator,”_ Dr. Leland told her. _“Don’t let him get inside your head.”_ She shut her eyes, cleared her throat. She wouldn’t screw this up.

 

“Joker,” she said, looking him in the eye. His smile only widened. That was her first mistake: addressing him by “Joker”—but what else could she call him? It’s not like he had a real name.

 

Joker: John Doe. Possible names: Jackson, Jack, John, Joseph, Jay—all names given at one point or another, none of which were found to be real. No surnames.

 

If he had ever been anyone else, that person was long gone by now.

 

All that remained was the Joker.

 

He still looked gaunt and sickly, with the black “J” tattoo on his cheek almost glowing against his pale skin. _He’s still not totally recovered._ She could use that to her advantage today, get some leverage on him. “My name is Dr. Quinzel. I’ll be your psychiatrist going forward, unless the higher-ups decide to change things.”

 

“Quin-zel,” he said, drawing out the last syllable, tasting her name with the tip of his tongue. “Zel, zel, zel. Mmmmm. Funny, strange. I like it.” Wiggling in his straitjacket, he leaned forward, grinning his metallic teeth at her. “What’s your first name, Quin-ze _lll_?”

 

She felt her heart start to race. _You’re in control here_ , she reminded herself. _Don’t let him get to you_.

 

 

“What’s yours? John or Jack, or would you like to be called Joe today?” she shot back.

 

He pouted, rolling his head from side to side. “Naughty, naughty, doctor; I asked _you_ first.”

 

 _It’s just your first name_ , she thought. _Move forward and get him talking._ She took a deep breath.

 

“Harleen,” she finally answered.

 

His grin grew even wider and she felt the back of her neck heat up with anger.

 

“Dr. Har-leen Quin-zel. Ooooh, like… _Harlequin_.” He waggled his hairless brows at her and started laughing. “A harlequin, all for _me_.”

 

Anxiety twisted her stomach into knots. _“If you give him an inch, he’ll take a mile. You’ve dealt with Zsasz and Mathis, but tread lightly; the Joker gets off on messing with people.”_ What, like Zsasz and Mathis didn’t? Working with two psychopathic serial killers should’ve prepared her enough for dealing with this man.

 

But Harleen knew Dr. Leland was right; the Joker was a whole different ballgame altogether.

 

She looked down at his chart, read: SEVERE MEGALOMANIA. Her trump card would lie in messing with his ego, she decided. She looked up after his laughing fit had finally stopped and saw him staring at her with dark curiosity.

 

She smiled at him, the sweetest, most saccharine smile she could muster and giggled, “Yes, like harlequin. Very clever of you, Joker; no one has ever told me that before.” She tried to make herself sound as sincere as possible as she watched him squirming in his straitjacket. She wondered if he knew how to escape from one and if it was only a matter of time before he’d launch himself across the table and try to kill her.

 

 

He gnashed his silver teeth together. Even from this distance she could see that his gums were still bleeding, and her stomach churned. “Liar!” he hissed, and the dark tone in his voice caught her off guard before he started laughing again. “Liar, liar, little tiny pink panties on fire.”

 

_What?_

_Oh my God._

 

Harleen’s face felt like it was boiling. She wore a hot pink thong today to go with her bra, but there’s no way he could’ve known unless she somehow presented her ass to him as she turned to sit down, and her skirt was far too long for that—  
  
Unless…

 

 

Her eyes grew wide and the Joker kept laughing, nearly bouncing out of his chair. _He guessed._

Harleen tightly crossed her legs under the table to keep herself from shuddering.

 

She was dealing with a very, very dangerous man.

 

She decided to change the subject. Anything else would work, anything mundane just to get the focus of the conversation back on him and away from her. She wouldn’t tip him off to the fact that he’d guessed the truth. “It says in my notes here, Joker, that you’ve got a sweet tooth when it comes to Swedish Fish. Is that true?”

 

The Joker stopped laughing, rolled his eyes. “Wow, doll, you may be pretty but you sure are boring. Ya got any original thoughts bouncin’ around in that beautiful blonde head of yours, hmmmm? Or are you just another dingbat who fucked her way to the top?”

 

That stung. Harleen grit her teeth. “That’s nowhere near appropriate—“

 

“Relax, sweetheart, _I_ don’t think you’re just a dumb blonde.”

 

“I’m not your “sweetheart” and flattery will get you nowhere, Joker.”

 

“Ooooh, flattery has gotten me plenty of places, Dr. Quin-zel.” Harleen bristled at the sound of his voice; she hated how he pronounced her name. But then he licked his red lips and she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to knock his teeth out—again—or run her tongue across his mouth. She bit the inside of her lip, shaking her head. _Get a grip, Harleen._

 

“I see you shaking your head, writin’ your little notes. No need for any of that. Just listen. Lis-ten, lis-ten, lis-ten, mmmm? You’ve lasted this long without having the guards come in to beat me all to shit; that’s a helluvalot more than I can say for the last shrink who saw me here. What I’m sayin’ is, I can tell you’ve guts and brains, kiddo. But I can’t help but think that the rest of the world sees you as just a gorgeous—and you are _gorgeous_ —face…” he trailed off, his mouth pursed in a pout that was almost sweet. He reminded her of a sad puppy. Her cheeks burned as she felt her heart flutter.

 

 

“We’re not here to talk about me, Joker, we’re here to talk about you—“

 

“I have an idea!” He leaned forward again, blue eyes bright with malicious glee. “How about a little game of quid pro quo. You ask me somethin’ and I answer your boring questions, and in return I get to ask you questions and _you_ have to answer.”

 

 _He can’t be serious._ But he was; he definitely was. Harleen blanched and she heard a low sound come from the Joker’s throat. _Did he just—he just purr?_

She chose to ignore it. “Quid pro quo? Fancy yourself a Dr. Lecter, Joker?”

 

“You’re the shrink here, Quin-zel. I’m just the loon in a straitjacket.” He shrugged, attempting to scratch his nose with his shoulder. The awkward gesture made her giggle despite herself, and his lips curled up again. “Me, I don’t like eating people. At least I think I don’t. Suppose you can’t really knock somethin’ ‘till you try it.” He laughed that slow laugh of his, drawn out and cruel. Harleen tried not to wince this time; it was the sound of a blade slicing skin from flesh.

 

Her feelings towards him vacillated between disgust and a shameful desire and she wasn’t sure which was better or worse.

 

“And what _do_ you like, Joker?”

 

“Oooooh, at little of this, a little of that. Long walks on the beach, exorbitantly priced steak dinners, shooting up a club…giving my rivals fancy Columbian neckties.” He flashed his silver grin again.

 

 _Enough._ She was getting tired of his antics. “You’re scheduled for electroshock therapy every day this week.” He stopped squirming. _That got his attention._ “Dr. Arkham is convinced that’s the only way to cure you. But if I see progress, meaning if you cooperate, I can change that.” She paused, watching him as his brows drew together and his expression grew dark. “I say this because I don’t think electroshock is what you need,” she continued, tucking a lock of blonde hair behind her ear, “It’ll just turn your brain into porridge.”

 

“So you’re tellin’ me that if I answer your questions, you and your quack-friends won’t throw my head into a blender, eh? You drive a hard bargain, beautiful, but I dunno. Ain’t that, uh, what you quacks want—a nearly catatonic, harmless Joker?”

 

What’s this? Were they beginning to have a genuine conversation? Harleen smiled to herself; she needed to keep it going.

 

“Maybe, Joker.” She nodded. “Maybe that’s what your old doctors wanted. Maybe that’s what Dr. Arkham wants, too. And Dr. Crane. But what _I_ want is for you to be healthy.”  
  
That was a lie, of course; she had no delusions about “curing” him. There was nothing to cure, really. He was a megalomaniac psychopathic gangster with a clown gimmick. All she really wanted was for him to talk because he’d be her final step in making it big. Sure, she’d published case studies on Zsasz and Mathis, parts of which saw the light of day in _Psychology Today_ , but they were really, for the most part, strictly academic, and read only by those in her field. They didn’t make the splash she was hoping for, either. After that, she’d tried to get in on Harvey Dent, only to lose him to Dr. Crane; and she’d tried to get to Pamela Isley, only for Leland to assign Tony to her. The only way she’d get what she wanted was if someone equally famous and disturbed showed up at Arkham, so when the GCPD brought the clown in, it was all Harleen could do to not salivate at the opportunity. Harleen knew that she needed the Joker to get to where she wanted to be. He’s means to an end for her—that’s all.

 

The Joker licked his teeth, mouth twisting into a snarl. “You want more than that, babydoll. I know ambition when I see it. ” He kept fidgeting, rolling back and forth on his chair, clearly uncomfortable in the straitjacket. His pale forehead had long since formed beads of sweat. She almost felt bad for him.

 

Almost.

 

He was hard enough to tangle with right now, hopped up on a cocktail of meds and still recovering from his injuries. He’d be an even greater challenge in the future when he was healthy.

 

Still, she found him fascinating. Her eyes followed every movement he made, every time he cracked his neck or strained his jaw or wiggled in his chair. As he rolled his shoulders, Harleen could see the powerful muscles that corded beneath his neck. _Did he just…did he just wink at me?_ “It’s rude to stare, doc.”

 

 _Shit._ He grinned, and his smile was so mesmerizing that Harleen couldn’t help but suck in a sharp breath.

 

Sure, his hair was shocking, and his mouth was a mess, but she couldn’t deny that he had a certain allure, a cool confidence beneath all the fidgeting. He did his best to stretch in the confines of the jacket, arching his back in a way that vaguely reminded her of a cat. Even in the straitjacket he was…graceful.

 

She felt that flutter again, along with something else twisting low in her stomach. Harleen clenched her legs together. _Get a goddamn grip; he’s a fucking psychopath!_

 

The beeping on Harleen’s watch is what finally pulled her attention from him.

 

“It looks like we’re out of time, Joker. Is there anything else you want to say before I call the guards in?”

 

“Now that you mention it,” he yawned, “wow-wee, I’m bushed. Think you could get me somethin’ to help me sleep, doc?”

_He does look tired_ , she thought. She knew from his chart that his mania often kept him from sleeping, but Dr. Leland had said that his medications were not to be “fucked with.” And the notes from the previous doctors implied that he seemed to enjoy running on little-to-no sleep. Still, she didn’t want to tell him no, not when he’d made such a seemingly honest request, anyway. She took any genuine comment from him as a sign of potential progress. “I’ll have to consult with Dr. Leland—“

 

“While you’re at it, my mouth and ribs are killin’ me, too.” He stuck his bottom lip out, gave her that sad puppy-dog look again.

 

_Master manipulator._

 

“I’ll see what I can do, Joker.”

 

“Thanks, doll.” In the low light, his silver teeth reminded her of a crescent moon. “And please, feel free to call me J or Mr. J.”

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Joker hit his head against the cinderblock wall in frustration. It was the meds, he was sure of it. They made his mind all hazy and confused. In the past he’d been able to chew up and spit out every Arkham doctor he’d ever come across after just a few minutes with them, like each one was a goddamn chicken wing. Doctors, they’re easy to pick apart; shrinks especially. It takes a certain kind of fucked up individual to want to treat other, even more fucked up individuals for a living. Joker knew that; loved to exploit it.

 

Hell, he was so good at it he had turned it into a game: How Long Will This One Last?

 

With every new doctor Arkham would send into his den, he’d set himself a new record.

 

That is, until today.

 

And this new doctor Arkham had assigned him was pretty easy to read, maybe the easiest in a long time. A tight top that barely held in some wonderfully perky tits; fake prescription eyeglasses to make her come across as a more of a force to be reckoned with; and her blonde hair and spunky attitude all told him that she was insecure, ambitious, and wasn’t beyond using her body to get what she wanted. Still, despite all her obvious tells, he hadn’t been able to get her to crack. Oh yeah, he definitely ruffled her feathers a bit—she wasn’t very good at hiding her anger—but she got through the session without clocking him in the face or having the guards come in to do the same.

 

 

He was too slow, too dull, really, to fully exploit any of her weaknesses. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept and his mind felt like an egg frying on the edge of a sidewalk. She had all these weak points for him to sink his fucked up teeth into and all he could do was uselessly nibble.

 

In the end, she won the battle.

 

He growled; he felt like he’d been neutered.

 

The whole time she spoke to him he just wanted to wrap his hands around her skinny little neck and rip her throat out.

 

That’s what he told himself, anyway. He wanted to do other things to her neck, too, things he couldn’t remember wanting to do anyone for a long, long time.

 

Every time she challenged him, he wanted to leap across the table and pin her against the wall and…  
  
And what? Kill her?

_Yes!_ Crush the life out of her pretty little body and—

 

_Fuck her?_

 

_No. Maybe. Yes._

_Fuck._

 

When was the last time he wanted to fuck some dumb broad? Months? _Years?_

 

Sex had always been low on his list of priorities, and these days he’d be surprised and slightly annoyed if it ever crossed his mind at all. There were better ways to get off—stealing from Falcone, gun running, expanding his turf, fighting Batsy—and they were all productive uses of his time. Sex was just…there. Yeah, he’d enjoy a lap dance from a mobster’s girlfriend or two while making a deal, but it was all part of the game. And with the rise of Batman, sex went from being an annoying itch, a sort of ever-present pebble in his shoe that he chose to ignore, to just…slipping off the face of the planet and into oblivion.

 

Even so, in his overly medicated state, that’s what he wanted to do.

 

Maybe it was the way she looked at him when he struggled in the jacket—like she was enjoying his pain, the way his ribs crunched every time he tried to move to get more air into his lungs—or maybe it was because she sat there, ruffled, but not ruined, like _she_ was the fucking _Bat_ and could play his game all day long if she wanted to—but he wanted to fuck her until she bled, fuck her as she raked her perfectly manicured nails along his back and left teeth marks on his neck.

 

The worst part was that he knew she wanted him too, saw her pupils dilate in her sapphire eyes every time he so much as sneezed. It was fucked up— _she_ was fucked up.

 

Beneath her carefully crafted exterior, she was probably the most fucked up doctor he’d ever met, and she didn’t even know it.

 

She’d be a great new toy to play with if his head wasn’t so cobwebby and murky from all the meds.

 

A scent wafted up to his nose: lavender, maybe? Joker’s nostrils flared—it was her perfume, still clinging to his skin hours after the session. _Fuck._

 

 

Joker groaned, feeling dick start to swell against his sweatpants. He looked down at himself and snarled in disgust. The shrinks still had him in a straitjacket, which they only let him out of for pre-determined bathroom and meal breaks. They weren't taking any chances with him this time.

 

He had an irritating tent in his pants now, and there was nothing he could do about it—except maybe hump his cot or pillow like a horny teenager.

 

He hit his head against the wall again, shutting his eyes. He didn’t bother to stir when he heard the door to his cell opening.

“Leave me alone, Batsy,” he muttered, twisting himself into awkward fetal position on his cot. “I haven’t done shit today.”

 

 

“Now, now, Joker, enough with hitting your head against the wall. We wouldn’t want you hurting yourself, would we? Keep this up, and you'll get yourself locked up in our favorite padded room. Now what could be—Oh! You _do_ seem excited down there. I wonder what has you so riled up. Perhaps it’s our very own beautiful Dr. Quinzel? I’ll be sure to tell her, don’t you worry.”  
  
Joker’s ears perked up. That was a voice he didn’t recognize. He cracked an eye open, saw a man with chestnut brown hair and brown eyes staring down at him.

“Who the hell are you?”

 

The man looked down at him with a smile that Joker _did_ recognize, because it was a smile that he himself so often used.

 

“My name is Dr. Jonathan Crane,” the man said, crouching next to his cot. “I’ll be running a new study on you. See, the drugs I had you on earlier weren’t quite doing the job. Sent you to the E.R. here, if I remember correctly. But now I’ve finally perfected my formula, and you’ll be my test subject once again.”

 

Joker laughed. He suddenly felt like the sanest man in the loony bin. “Like hell, string bean.”

  
Dr. Crane frowned, and Joker felt a hard fist connect with his mouth. He could taste the copper, but none of the teeth felt loose. That was a plus. “You misunderstand me, clown. You have no choice in this.”

 

Other footsteps joined the room and Joker felt strong hands grip his ankles.

 

“You see, I’ve read your file, Joker—”

“That’s, ah, what you shrinks tend to do around here.”

Another punch to the mouth, a sharp pain in his jaw. He _really_ couldn’t talk anymore, no matter how much he wanted to.

 

Dr. Crane pulled out a syringe with a strange green liquid in it. “One of your previous doctors said you have no fear. Well, I plan to test that assumption.” Dr. Crane flicked the tube of the syringe, causing droplets of the green stuff to squirt out and land in Joker’s eye. The stuff burned, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t take. Suddenly Dr. Crane was next to him again, eyes glinting with a sadism Joker knew all too well.

 

 _The abyss gazes back, mmm?_   He chuckled to himself.

 

“Let’s see what your biggest fears are, Joker.”

 

Joker smiled; this was going to be fun.

 

 

 

He was wrong.

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue straight from The Killing Joke in this one, folks. Plagiarism is no bueno, so I'm citing my source right now. It's literally from The Killing Joke. 
> 
> Also one paraphrased sentence or two from the Mad Love comic/episode. 
> 
> Enjoy!

“See you later, Aaron!”

“All right, Miss Quinzel! ‘Sposta rain real hard today. You take care of yourself headin’ home.”

 

She smiled back at the guard. Aaron Cash, a little rough around the edges, but he was a sweet guy. She needed someone to be sweet to her after the day she had. Her thoughts drifted to Dr. Leland’s mahogany paneled office.

 

“Absolutely not. We finally got him stabilized and he’s still detoxing.”

 

“He can’t sleep—“

 

“That’s nothing new, Quinzel.”

 

“He’s in _pain_ , Dr. Leland.”

 

Dr. Leland turned to face Harleen, snapping her head towards her so quickly that she could’ve been the Flash. “He’s left this whole city in pain, Dr. Quinzel.”

 

Harleen had never seen Dr. Leland so angry before. She’d always been a hard, no-nonsense woman, yes, but Harleen could see violent storms raging behind her dark eyes. Maybe the Joker’s crimes had personally affected Leland in some way?

 

 _Like most of Gotham._ She grimaced.

But if that was the case, Leland was letting her personal feelings dictate his treatment procedure.

 

The level of unprofessionalism—far too much.

 

 _Hypocrite_ , Harleen chided herself. After all, she was the one who was attracted to the Joker, despite the fact that she knew well and good that he was a monster.

 

 _It’s just a fantasy, and you didn’t have your morning coffee today, anyway_. _Your thoughts are goofy because you didn’t get your caffeine, that’s all._

 

Every time she tried to reassure herself, she felt worse. _What kind of doctor are you?_

 

She shook her head, put her hands on her hips. “So we’re supposed to just let him suffer, then, is that it? Is that how doctors are supposed to treat their patients?”

 

Dr. Leland sighed, turning back towards the window. With the yellow light of Gotham’s late afternoon peeking through the blinders, Harleen thought that Leland looked like a femme fatale in a noir film. _She’s pretty._ Harleen smiled; she admired Dr. Leland, wanted to be like her. She only wished that Leland would listen.

 

“What made you decide to become a psychiatrist, Harleen?” Leland kept staring out the window, watching dark clouds slowly begin to gather over Gotham’s skyline.

 

Harleen blinked, surprised. She’d been asked this question before, many, many times, but it seemed different this time, somehow. Deeper, maybe. Or was it Leland’s tone? She wasn’t sure. “I wanted to help people who were suffering from ailments we can’t see.”

 

“Cut the bullshit, Harleen, we both know that’s not true.”

 

Harleen’s brows shot up. Dr. Leland’s sudden hostility startled her, but she wasn’t one to back away from a challenge.

 

“It _is_ true,” she insisted, crossing her arms, “what else do you want me to say, Dr. Leland? That I’ve always had an attraction to extreme personalities and that’s why I wanted this job?”

 

“That’d be the first bit of truth from you that I’ve heard since you got here, Quinzel.”

 

Dr. Leland was finally looking back at her now, a casual smile on her face, and Harleen didn’t know what to do. Anger and frustration boiled in her blood and her cheeks simmered hotly with embarrassment.

 

“Your patient will stay on the medications Dr. Crane and I have prescribed him, and nothing else, until I say otherwise.”

The realization finally dawned on her. This was Dr. Leland’s way of punishing the Joker.

 

And Harleen couldn’t really blame Dr. Leland; she’d never admit it, but a part of her wanted to punish the Joker, too. She’d seen the clip of him on the news, _the_ clip, like all of Gotham had, and watched in horror as he shot up a GCPD officer’s funeral on live TV, looking like crazed and feral kid in a candy store while killing innocent civilians. News reports later revealed that he’d really been after Commissioner Gordon; the rest of the people he killed were just collateral damage. She’d been living in Gotham for a year and a half at this point and knew that the city’s violent reputation was well deserved, but when she saw _that_ , on the news, she felt a chill go through her.

 

Still, strapping a man with a broken jaw and multiple broken ribs in a straitjacket for nearly twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, without any sort of medication to dull the pain, was harsh. She saw the effects of it today, watching him constantly squirm and sweat and generally look drained despite his best efforts to screw with her head.

 

It was torture, plain and simple, and while she _did_ get a dark thrill from seeing such a nasty piece of work so beaten down, her conscious told her that enough was enough.

 

She thought, briefly, that perhaps Dr. Leland had also been the one who tried to kill him…but no. No, that didn’t fit; Leland wanted to draw out his pain, not kill him. Someone else’s skin was in the game here, and Harleen aimed to find out whose exactly it was.

  
“I could go to Arkham, you know. I could tell him that you’re willfully making a patient suffer out of some misplaced desire for retribution.”

 

“You try that and I’ll assign you back to the catatonics and Zsasz. Remember: it’s your word against mine. You’re not here out of a naïve desire to do some good in the world. I read your case studies; these patients are tools to you. But I knew that from the moment you stepped into my office. And I know because I was just like you, not too long ago. I’m happy to say that I’ve mostly outgrown that—you clearly haven’t, though. Every person you see is a stepping-stone to you, just another rung in the ladder to the top, whatever amorphous thing _that_ is, so don’t come to me like you’ve suddenly developed the ability to empathize with other people. Believe it or not, you and that clown are alike—you both like to use people—which is why I picked you to be his psychiatrist. Maybe we’ll finally get somewhere with him if there’s a doctor who can more easily take on his perspective. ”

 

Harleen’s head spun. Was Dr. Leland really implying that she was a psychopath like the Joker, when Leland was the one who basically just admitted that she was sadistically keeping him off pain meds for vengeance?

 

 

_Ridiculous._

People were counting on her. She had a sister to help put through college and a mother who was slowly dying from kidney failure. Yes, she had goals, and yes, maybe she had a bit of a ruthless side to her when it came to pursuing her goals, but she wasn’t a mass-murdering mobster, jeez.

 

_But part of you wishes that you were._

Harleen shook her head again. Her thoughts were getting darker and more disturbing as the day dragged on. _I need a drink._ The two women glared at each other until Harleen finally broke the silence. “So you _do_ want me to cure him.”

 

“Of course; that’s our mission here.”

“But you also want him to suffer.”

“I don’t want a repeat of the E.R. rodeo that happened last week.”

 

That was it; that’s all she’d get from Dr. Leland. _Tough lady_. Harleen smirked.

 

“I’m sure none of us do.”

“Glad we understand each other, Dr. Quinzel.”

 

 

 

“Miss Quinzel, are you all right?”

“Yeah, Aaron, I’m okay.”

“You sure? You’re looking a little pale. Tough day at work with the crazies?”

 

Thunder clapped in the distance and Harleen looked back at the gates of the asylum. “Always is, Aaron,” she whispered. “Always is.”

 

It took her over an hour to get home, with Gotham’s dark narrow streets forming a gridlock of vehicles that snaked across the city for miles. Everyone was trying to beat the storm.

 

When she finally opened the rickety door to her studio apartment, soaked to the bone and desperately craving the feel of her pillows against her cheeks, a frigid breeze ran across her face, stopping her in her tracks. Lightning flashed, illuminating her tiny home.

 

Her window was ajar. _Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit._ She ran over to shut it, nearly jumping out of her skin when she heard a rough voice behind her.

 

“Dr. Quinzel.”

 

It was the voice of a man, and from the sound of it, a very large man.

  

“Please don’t hurt me. Please. I’ll do anything you want.”

 

She still hadn’t turned around. Fear paralyzed her, kept her rooted in place, while a dozen scenarios played through her head, none of them good. _Move, Harleen, move._ She reached for the pen she had tucked behind her ear. What was _that_ going to do? Maybe it’d work for stabbing him in the eye or something if she was quick enough. And she _was_ quick. _Better than nothing._

 

“Dr. Quinzel, I’m not going to hurt you. I want to talk. Turn around.”

 

She did as the gravely voice ordered…only for her to collapse to her knees while her stomach dropped into the center of the earth when she saw his face.

 

“Oh my—oh my God. It’s you.”

 

The pointed ears, the strong chin, the imposing presence—

 

The Batman.

 

_Oh God._

 

“You’re okay, Dr. Quinzel. I’m not going to hurt you. Please stand.”

 

She tried to get up, she really did, but her legs gave out, wobbly and clammy and not much use for anything besides making her look like she was made out of boiled spaghetti noodles. She wanted to laugh; she was such a chaotic mess. Strong, gloved hands grabbed her arms, held her up.

 

“S-such a gentleman,” she giggled, nervously. “Thank you.”

 

“It’s no problem, doctor.” His thin lips turned up slowly, gently. “I apologize for frightening you.”

 

She rubbed the back of her head, suddenly embarrassed at the disheveled state of her apartment. Textbooks on the floor, Agatha Christie crime novels on her bed…panties randomly thrown about. Wow: she really was a fucking mess.

 

_Liar, liar, little tiny pink panties on fire._

 

She heard the Joker’s twisted laughter in her ears, grimaced when his words slithered through her thoughts.

 

“S’all right.” She looked away from the large man in front of her, shyness overtaking her body. “Do you, uh, want some coffee? I get the feeling we’re going to be talking for a while.”

 

He smiled again, and Harleen thought that maybe she’d seen him somewhere before. The cleft in his chin looked particularly familiar.

 

 _Who is the man behind the cowl?_ she wondered.

 

“No thank you, doctor, but I appreciate the offer. I came here to give you a warning.”

 

Harleen knew what was coming next.

 

“Let me guess: the Joker is dangerous, be careful.” She was tired; she didn’t want to hear this.

 

His mouth flattened into a grim line. “Don’t underestimate him, doctor.”

 

She crossed her arms, annoyed. “You broke into my house to say this? I won’t.”

 

“I need your word, doctor. I need your word that he won’t come out of that revolving door in Arkham to hurt more people.”

 

Her word? What was he playing at? She gazed at him, tried to glean whatever he was feeling from the small part she could see of his face. His brown eyes reminded her of Dr. Leland’s, filled with rage and a deep sorrow.

 

“The Joker hurt you, too, huh.”

“He hurt someone very close to me.”

 

_Of course, that’s all the Joker does._

_He hurts people._

 

She felt a tug in her chest and bile rise in her throat. She couldn’t believe that she felt attracted to such a monster, however brief.

 

His warm hand grasped her shoulder. The Batman: Gotham’s Dark Knight, nightmare of the criminal underworld, costumed vigilante to the cops, and savior of the people.

 

A complicated man, but a _good_ man.

 

“He and I are set on a collision course,” he said, breaking her out of her thoughts. “I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but one day one of us is going to kill the other. It’s only a matter of time.” His grip on her shoulder suddenly tightened, not enough to be painful, no, but there. Present. “I don’t ever want to see that day, doctor,” he finished.

 

He was pleading with her, she realized.

Pressure wrapped tightly around her skull, pounding and incessant. As if she needed one more reason to _not_ fuck up with the Joker.

 

“The Joker stays in Arkham.”

“I need your word, doctor. Please.”

 

“You have my word.”

 

When she makes a promise, she means it. She’s proud that part of herself, the ability to make promise and do her best to follow through.

 

But as she looked into his eyes, sounds of the Joker's sharp laughter rang in her ears, and she hoped that this time she would be strong enough to keep her word.

 

* * *

 

 

Bruce Wayne pulled off his cowl, feeling relief as the cool air of the Batcave soothed his burning head. He took off his gloves and absentmindedly massaged his knuckles as he sat down.

 

“How’d it go, Master Bruce?”

 

“Chocolate chip cookies, Alfred? You always know how to cheer me up.” Bruce leaned back in his chair, staring at the main screen of his computer.

 

“I do my best, sir.”

 

Bruce grabbed a cookie, never taking his eyes off the monitor. It was a picture of the Joker, shirtless besides his gaudy purple alligator skin coat, shooting at Commissioner Gordon during Officer Dignam’s funeral. How could he have missed him?

  
  
How could he have _let him get away?_

 

“Master Bruce?”

 

“It went fine, Alfred. The camera is on her lab coat.”

 

“Of course it is, sir. You know, when you told me you were going to see a psychiatrist, this is not what I thought you meant.”

 

Bruce snorted. It was a half-hearted attempt at a laugh. How could he laugh after what happened, when guilt racked his entire body?

 

He let it happen, he let the Joker go and, and—

_No. Don’t go there._

  
  
And after his short visit with the psychiatrist, he felt even more unnerved. There was something about her, something that scratched at the back of his brain, the part where all his paranoia sprang from, which itched even worse now, considering the fact that he that he apprehended a man who attempted to break into the doctor's apartment only moments before she entered the room.

 

She was beautiful, young, and successful, all the things she needed to be to fit into society’s expectations and surpass them.

 

For all that, she deeply disturbed him on a level that he couldn’t describe or properly understand. Who was the man? Was there a connection to the Joker? He had so many questions, but he couldn’t stay. She made him feel ill and he couldn’t fathom why.

 

“I just don’t get it, Alfred.” Bruce kept staring at the Joker, his perfect smile and his perfect white teeth, teeth that Bruce broke and ruined with a crowbar and then is own two hands, as if his uninterrupted gaze would somehow give him some clue as to who the Joker really was. He kept looking, searching for a man, and all he saw was the devil.

 

“What is there to understand, Master Bruce?”

 

“We’ve been enemies for years, and I still don’t know who he is, any more than he knows who I am. How can two people fight each other for so long—hate each other for so long—without even knowing each other? It’s baffling.” He sat back, rubbed his eyes.

 

Nausea rolled through him as the memories of the Joker’s beaten and bloody face flooded back to him. The Joker’s head lolled back and forth on the cement of the docks, blood and loose teeth and bits of flesh all smashed together in a picture of gore. If it hadn’t been for the Joker’s labored wheezes, Bruce would’ve thought he killed the man.

He _almost_ did; he definitely wanted to.

 

He had never been more frightened of himself in his entire life.

 

“Perhaps, Master Bruce, it’s best not to know.”

 

“What are you saying, Alfred?”

 

“Trying to understand a man like that—"

 

“Bruce! Alfred!”

 

Bruce looked up and saw Jason at the mouth of the mansion entrance.

 

“What is it, Jason?”

 

The teenager ran down, breathless with excitement.

 

“Babs is awake!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to say thanks for all the feedback! You guys are awesome. I'll do my best to stick with this story, because I know where I want to take it, and I'm excited to share this experience with you all. My only hope is the real life doesn't get too much in the way, haha. Anyways, thanks again for your comments and kudos!
> 
> Much love,  
> Noodles


	7. Chapter 7

 

Electroshock therapy.

 

Joker’s had it just once before at Arkham, and his memory isn’t too clear on the details, but it’s a simple enough procedure. The orderlies restrain him while a terrified nurse takes his blood pressure and then, bam, the anesthesia hits, the fat lady sings, it’s lights out, and you wake up with blurry recollections and a roaring headache for your trouble.

 

Better than choking on a feeding tube. A walk in the park, really; easy peasy lemon squeezy.

 

But that’s not how it goes this time, no.   
  
No, this time the orderlies wrap him up from head to toe in leather restraints as Dr. Crane looms over him, electric nodes in each of his hands. He smiles down at him, too, the smug fuck, and his lips are red.

 

“Sssstealin’ my ssstyle there, Crane,” he slurs; whatever strange drug the quack has him on is still coursing through his system. “Though they say imitation is the, ahhhh….highest form of flattery.”

 

Everything seems so much sharper. Colors, sounds; hell, even the air feels like needles scraping against his skin.

 

“Amazing. Even with your jaw swollen to the size of a grapefruit, you still don’t know when to _shut up_.”

 

“Hey, it’s not _my_ fau—”

 

Joker’s mouth slams shut on his tongue as the electricity passes through him. Every single muscle in his body seizes, cramping tighter and tighter until he thinks he just might explode. When Crane finally pulls the nodes away, Joker’s cackles, piercing and rough like nails against a chalkboard, reverberate and ricochet off of every corner in the white-tiled room, filling it and saturating it.

 

“Yowzah, Crane,” he wheezes, warm copper spilling from his damaged tongue and filling in his mouth, “that was _amazing!_ Was it good for you, too?”

 

“Still cracking jokes, clown?”

 

“Crane-y, Crane-y, Crane-y, I do have a, ahh… _reputation_ to uphold.”

Crane’s grin only grows wider, threatening to split his face in two. The green hair, the red lips—Joker thinks he’s looking into a mirror. He laughs again, immediately snuffing the idea; he’s much better looking than Crane.

 

“No matter,” Crane says, doing his best to ignore the Joker’s grating chuckles, “I’m doing God’s work. By the time I’m through with you, no one will remember your reputation, or who you are. Not the Bat, not Gotham—not even you. ”

 

* * *

 

Harleen’s phone rang again for the fifth time in twenty minutes. She stared at the number on the screen and momentarily contemplated throwing her cheap burner out the window.

 

After her brief and unsettling encounter with the Batman, all she wanted to do was take a shower, rub off the dirty feeling that’d been following her all day after her session with the Joker, and rest…but her mind, racing as it was, had _other_ ideas. Unable to sleep, she grabbed the huge file that Dr. Leland had given her regarding the Joker, and began to read through it again.

 

She pored over every diagnosis and every type of medication he’d ever been given, some underlined with scribbled notes she could barely make out, and others with question marks written in parenthesis next to them.

 

SEVERE MEGALOMANIA, SCHIZOPHRENIA (?), ANTI-SOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER, BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER…

 

…on and on the list went, with each new psychiatrist adding something freshly asinine or supporting a previously asinine diagnosis, even though none had treated the Joker for more than a session or two.

 

She shook her head. The more she read about him, the descriptions of his crimes and the notes from past doctors, the only diagnoses she remained convinced of were his megalomania and his psychopathy. She didn’t believe he was insane; he knew the differences between right and wrong, he just didn’t care. Harleen scrunched her nose. _He should be in Blackgate waiting for the electric chair._  


Dr. Leland wanted her to try and cure him though. Even though she was torturing him, she also felt compelled to try and…fix him? How did that make any sense? And furthermore, how could she cure him if there was nothing to cure?

 

….Did it matter?

 

She only wanted to treat him so that she could make money. As far as she was concerned, he was a lost cause.

 

_But maybe there’s something else I’m missing. I’ve only had one session with him, too._  
  
Harleen leaned back against the headboard of her bed, trailing her eyes from the pile of dirty clothes on her desk up to the ceiling, were a brown water stain rested.

_  
_ What if she _did_ find something, and after that, cured him? She’d not only be a superstar in the psychiatric community, but she’d arguably save a man’s life.

 

Cure the Joker. She’d be lying if she said that the idea didn’t intrigue her. __  
  


 

“Everyone at Arkham is a headcase,” she said, staring at the stain. It looked like a frown. “I just need to find out what your particular headcase is, Mister… J.”

 

And that’s when her phone started to ring.

 

At 3:00 a.m. in the morning, when she should’ve been curled up in her soft bed and sleeping. She tried to ignore it, but—

 

_RING, RING, RING_

 

—the phone would ring all night if she didn’t pick up. She sighed, pressing the green button to answer.

 

“Hello—”

 

“Harleen! What’s up with ya? Ya not answerin’ our calls anymore. What, ya too good for us now? Me and mom have been worried ‘bout ya, staying in Gotham for that long. Your accent’s all stuffy now.”

 

“Sorry, Tiff,” Harleen answered, moving to pick up her dirty clothes off the ground. She might as well get some cleaning done while she was awake. She stopped when she saw the scuffmarks on her floor. _What in the world?_ “I’ve…I dunno, I’ve just been busy.”

 

“Hey, ya okay? Ya sound a little shaky or somethin’, like ya seen a ghost.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” she lied. The scuffmarks on her floor made her stomach flip. They couldn’t have come from the Batman, could they have? Had someone _else_ been in her apartment before he arrived? The thought made her shudder. “Listen, Tiff, you called me pretty late and I have work in the morning—”

 

“I know that ya workin’ in that creepy asylum, sis, but this is important. Mom, she’s…she’s not doin’ too well.”

 

There it was: the reason that Harleen had been avoiding her sister’s calls for the past three weeks. Harleen swallowed hard. “How bad is she?” she asked, words spilling from her mouth like dry cotton balls.

 

“She’s stuck on the dialysis machine all day now, Harls. I’m doin’ my best to take care of her, but with school and college apps and my job and everythin’ else, I’m not always there and she gets real lonely. I came home yesterday an’ she was cryin’, Harls; she was sayin’ that she’s never gonna see you again.”

 

Harleen’s grip on the phone tightened. “What have the doctors said?”

 

“…They give her about a year, maybe a year and half, but only if she stays on the dialysis.”

 

_Oh, mom._ The back of her throat hurt and her eyes burned.

 

“Sis?”

 

“Yeah, Tiff?”

 

“Can ya please come home?”

 

Harleen swallowed the heavy lump in her throat. She missed her baby sister so much, missed her mom’s warm hugs and loving advice. Hot tears streaked down her cheeks. “Yeah, Tiff, I’m working on it. I’ll be home real soon; I promise.”

 

When she finally fell asleep at 5:00 in the morning, it was from exhaustion. She woke up at 7:00, with only twenty minutes to get ready and beat the traffic before she would be royally fucked and an hour late for work. She got ready in ten, forgoing a shower and applying light makeup to hide the dark circles under her eyes. She bought a redeye coffee (two shots of espresso, skim milk, and no sugar. Not the most pleasant Cup of Joe for the morning commute, but it’d more than get the job done) from the hole in the wall café next to her apartment. She managed to make it to Arkham only ten minutes late.

 

Stepping into the room, Harleen smoothed out her skirt, groaning internally. She felt jittery and exhausted at the same time; she’d really have to be on her toes today. “I apologize for being late, Mr. J,” she said, brusquely walking past him. “Now, how are you toda— _what the hell happened to your face?_ ” The question left her mouth before she had the presence of mind to reel in her shock.

 

His top lip was split and bleeding, and brand new bruises covered his swollen jaw. “I was a _baaaaad_ little boy,” he answered, words coming out slightly garbled. He wasn’t smiling or fidgeting this time.

 

“Did the guards do this to you?”

 

She’d been told that he offered no resistance in his transportation today. Something wasn’t right.

 

He blinked, scrunching his eyebrows together. He cocked his head to the side, leaning his right ear towards her. “Wha?”

 

“Did the guards hurt you?” she repeated.

 

He made a strange noise then, rolling his head back and forth. Suddenly he bared his teeth at her, fury raging on his face, and he growled. It was a sound like Harleen had never heard before, one that stabbed through her eardrums and cut vicious lines across her back. “ _Those_ incompetent losers?” he snarled, moving to stand despite the chains coiled tightly around his waist. “You think _they_ could hurt _me?_

 

“What, do you think your little friends outside are _better_ than me?”

 

His eyes were wild. _He’s a rabid animal._

 

Harleen sat frozen in fear as the chains screeched against his movements. “I’m the fucking King of Gotham, Dr. Quin-zel. The only one who can hurt me is the _Bat_ , and that’s only because I _let_ him. Get it, toots?” He stretched again in the straitjacket, and Harleen’s heart skipped a beat when she heard something tear.

 

“J,” she started, trying to keep her voice soothing. None of the notes in his file ever mentioned him ever becoming this agitated before, but the Joker was nothing if not unpredictable. She gulped. “J, you need to calm down, or I’ll have to have the guards come in.”

 

 

“ _I’m the King of Gotham!_ ” he repeated, this time screaming. Small drops of blood mixed with spit landed on the table. “ _I own this stinking shithole of a city, and I’ll burn it all down to the ground before I let any of you take it from me!”_

 

He kept struggling against the chains, causing them to pull taught against his abdomen. She thought of his ribs and the possible damage he was doing to them. _Dammit._

 

Swallowing, she pressed the button under the table.   
  
She instantly regretted her decision when one of the guards rushed over and hit him low in the stomach with his baton, knocking the wind out of him.

 

“What’d you do now, you piece of shit?”

 

“Stop hitting him!” Harleen yelled. “Stop it, you idiots! He needs to be sedated, not beaten to death!” She caught the Joker’s angry blue eyes glowering at her before another guard struck him in the stomach again.

 

But the Joker was sneaky, and Harleen watched in horror as he sunk his teeth into the neck of the second guard that hit him, tearing out a piece of flesh. The guard screamed, holding his neck as he fell on hard his ass.

 

The Joker spit the gore onto the table and started to laugh, but he sounded phlegmy and strained. _I hope these morons haven’t punctured his lungs._ Another guard rushed in, holding a baton across his neck.

 

There was cursing, and the shuffling sounds of booted feet as six other guards entered the room, each of their rifles trained on the Joker.

 

 

“ _Enough!_ ” Harleen shouted. The room finally stilled as every eye turned to look at her. “Enough,” she repeated, standing and smoothing out the new wrinkles in her skirt.

 

“Ma’am?”

 

“He needs to be sedated, that’s all.”

 

 

“Well, watcha waitin’ for, doc?” His glare drilled through her like a gunshot. “ _Sedate me_.”

 

She didn’t need to be told twice. Pulling out a syringe from the locked cabinet in the back of the room, she tried to steady her breathing. She still felt his gaze boring into her back the entire time.

 

_He wants to kill me_.

 

She walked over to him, placed a hand on his clammy forehead. The guard kept the baton firmly under his chin, restricting his movement, and he flinched slightly at her touch. _Interesting._

 

“I’m sorry about all this, J,” she said, pressing the needle into the sensitive skin of his neck.

 

“Sure you are, beautiful,” he slurred, shutting his eyes. “Sure you…a rrre e.”

 

Harleen let out a shaky breath of relief when she saw him finally slump in his chair.

 

“You okay, ma’am?” one of the guards—Rory, she thought his name was—asked her.

“Yes,” she said, trembling hands moving to wipe off the fog on her glasses. “But you’re not. I want the orderlies in here now; none of you meatheads are to touch my patient.”

 

“Ma’am,” Rory huffed, “we just saved your life. A little gratitude would be nice.”

 

“You saved me from nothing,” she snapped. She felt a migraine coming on. “My patient was incredibly agitated and I was worried that he would further exacerbate his injuries by pulling against those goddamn chains you had him restrained in. But you boys have made that a moot point now, so thank you. You better hope he doesn’t have to go to the E.R. for your stupidity, or all your heads will roll, mark my words.” She glanced at him, collapsed in the chair and looking helpless beyond words, and she clenched her fists. _I’m feeling sorry for a mass-murderer._

 

She looked back at the guard when she saw that no orderlies had come in yet. “What are you all still standing here for? _Get. Out._ ”

 

Later that day, Harleen sat in her office, contemplating her next step. The Joker’s outburst scared her, but what scared her even more were the new welts on his jaw and the split in his lips. Either he was harming himself in his cell, or someone else was doing the damage. She could go to Dr. Arkham, explain her concerns to him…no. She shook her head; she needed more proof, especially with Dr. Leland watching her like a hawk. She spun in her chair, catching a view of her cat poster that said, “Hang in there!”

 

“I’m tryin’ to, kitty-cat.”

 

She winced as the imagery of the guards beating his stomach flashed in her mind. If by some miracle his ribs didn’t re-fracture, he’d still be very sore.

 

“Dr. Leland isn’t going to let me prescribe him any pain meds,” she muttered to herself, lying her head down on her forearms, when an idea suddenly popped into her head.

 

_Don’t, Harleen. This is a stupid. You could get fired or worse—lose your license._

 

But she didn’t feel good about any of this. Yes, she’d be the first to say that she wasn’t some paragon of virtue when it came to treating her patients, but what Leland was getting away with was sick.

 

She looked at her purse and grit her teeth. She’d have to seduce the guard in charge of watching the security footage. The one who smelled like cabbage and whose beard constantly had food in it; that guard. Harleen’s top lip curled in disgust. _I’m going to regret this._

* * *

Joker’s head was swimming. His ears wouldn’t stop ringing and he felt like he had a desert for mouth. It was the world’s worst hangover, magnified twenty times over. Or two hundred times over; somewhere around there. Breathing in the straitjacket had suddenly gotten a lot more difficult, too. He exhaled, groaning as hundreds of blades plunged into his stomach.

 

He heard the door to his cell open and had trouble opening his eyes. “Meal time already? You’ll forgive me if I’m not feeling too hungry for that, ehh…mystery loaf you have on the menu today.”

 

“Joker.”

 

His brows shot up at the sound of her voice, and he shifted as much as he could to look at her. The little blonde was in his cell…alone.

 

He hummed to himself. _Interesting._

 

She wasn’t wearing her lab coat, so he could see her toned arms, even through her quarter sleeve blouse, and he distractedly noted how the light pink shirt and black skirt accentuated her slim waist. The neckline in her shirt ran low, although not low enough to show cleavage, but just enough for him to see her clavicle and the top of her chest. Joker swallowed; he wanted to run his teeth along the creamy skin he saw there. _Can’t play with her now, not in this state._ He settled for licking the cut on his lip.

“Watcha doin’ here, doc?” he asked, attempting to lean his back against the cinderblock wall behind him. “This seems a little too, ah, rule-break-y for you.”

 

“I came here to give you some medication,” she replied, not moving any closer to him.

 

“More?” He rolled his eyes. “What _is_ it with you shrinks and your illegal human experimentation?”

 

Her mouth dropped open. “Ex- _excuse_ me?”

 

He blinked, feigning boredom. “You really have no idea what’s going on in this loony bin, do you, sweetheart?”

 

“Don’t call me that, J,” she said, crossing her arms.

“Oooh, I’m in t-t-trouble now. But I gotta admit, I _love_ how you say my name with that tone. Gets my little J very excited.” He grinned at her.

 

Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t be crude.” _Keep challenging me, little girl. It’ll make it so fun when I crush you._

 

“Explain, J,” she ordered. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“And ruin all the fun? No, no, sweet Dr. Quinzel, I think I’ll keep you in the dark…for now.”

 

“Fine.” She smirked. _Very interesting._ “I was going to give you some morphine, but since you seem to be doing just dandy, I think I’ll head back to my office.”

 

Joker strained his neck, growling as he felt his jaw pulse. He was suddenly acutely aware of every single ache in his body, every single piercing sensation in his abdomen he as exhaled and inhaled. His lower stomach felt especially tender. Truth be told, his nerves were on fire; morphine would be more than a welcome relief.

 

“Wait, wait,” he said, slowly shutting his eyes. “Just hang on a minute there, doc.” She was controlling him again, he realized. He momentarily bristled at the thought until his jaw throbbed again. _Oh well_. He’d play her game by her rules for the time being, lull her into a sense of control, and then strike. Current situation being as it was, that would be the best plan. He nodded to himself. _When I get the chance, I’ll kill her slowly._

 

“I’m waiting,” she said, placing her hands on her hips.

“It’s— _achk—_ ” A particularly bad spasm on his lower left side cut off his words, forced him to clench his teeth and press his head against the wall. _Fuck._

 

It was as if some low-level henchman decided to betray him and stick his favorite bowie knife into his belly, and _then_ went on to scramble his insides with it for good measure.

 

Joker wanted to laugh, let a real nasty chuckle ripple through him, but it was an absolute no-go. Betrayal and the use of his favorite knife against him: the unholy mixture of everything he didn’t want, besides maybe a “Get Well Soon” card from the Bat himself.

 

Or maybe he’d like that?   
  
Knife in, knife out, scramble, scramble.

 

Screw it—doesn’t matter. Just need to get through this next wave.

 

“…J?”

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hissed, this time aloud.

 

It hurt so bad that he didn’t even notice the shift in weight on his cot, or her warm presence only inches away from him.

 

His eyes shot open when he felt her warm touch on his cheek, though—an utterly bizarre and alien feeling compared to what the rest of what his body was going through. He gaped at her. _The hell is this crazy broad doing?_

 

But then another spasm shook through him and he found himself leaning into her hand.

 

“ _Fuckkkk_ ,” he groaned, sore teeth still clenched.

“…J, the E.R.— ”

“ _No!_ ” Anger surged through him; this was humiliating! How dare she treat him like some kind of…some kind of _wounded dog?_ Touching his cheek as if he wasn’t the most dangerous man she’d ever come across—ridiculous! Stupid, stupid woman. “No E.R, doc. This’ll pass.” He curled in on himself as yet another spasm twisted his insides. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_. It’ll pass, it’ll pass.”

 

After what was probably only five minutes—but seemed like an eternity of a blade repeatedly sinking into his stomach, and him lying there and sweating with her disgusting touch of pity on his cheek—the pain finally, mercifully, subsided.

 

He flinched away from her as soon as it stopped. “Get your hand off me, blondie. I know I’m pretty but I’ve got rights, too, you know.”

 

She promptly looked away, cheeks red. His eyes narrowed, wheels in his cobwebby and overly medicated brain finally turning in the way they were supposed to, in the way he was used to.

 

“Sorry, Mr. J,” she said, standing. She crossed and uncrossed her arms at least three times while she looked around his entire cell, observing every nook and cranny but never looking directly at him.

 

A slow smile crept along his face. _Gotcha, pretty gal._ He knew, now, just how to press her buttons. Took him long enough.

 

She liked treating him, liked it when he was the wounded dog and she played the brave and selfless doctor. It irritated him, but he could work with that. She was breaking rules for him already and he hadn’t pushed her much, didn’t have the presence of mind to do so, really, what with all the meds turning his head into a gross stew. But he had her _now_ , and he couldn’t stop smiling.

 

_My own little Florence Nightingale, my little harlequin. We’re going to have so much fun together._

 

“Doc?” he asked, keeping his voice as light as he could. His throat was still very dry and made him sound a little more gravelly than he liked. When she didn’t respond and just kept staring at the wall, he whistled at her. “Yoo-hoo, earth to doc. Are ya there, doc?”

 

She startled, turned towards him. She had a blank expression on her face.

 

“The, ah, morphine,” he said, raising his brows. “Please,” he added.

 

“Oh! Right. Sorry, I just got lost in thought for a minute there.” She pulled a small bottle from out of her shirt—Joker snickered to himself at the thought of where she stored it—and popped open the cap.

 

“There’s not much left in here, only about ten capsules, but you should get some relief.” She held her hand out to him, two white pills resting on the smooth palm.

 

He looked up at her. “This is great and all, doc, but I think you’re, ah, forgetting one very important detail.”

 

She frowned, annoyed. “And that would be?”

 

“Ooooh, I dunno,” he said, rolling his head and shrugging his shoulders. “Maybe the fact that I’m in a straitjacket and can’t move my arms. Just taking a wild guess here. Little shot in the dark.”

 

Her cheeks turned a bright red and Joker hummed to himself again. He liked seeing her embarrassed.

 

“R-right. Sorry. Here.” She crouched next to him, moved to stick the pill in his mouth. He briefly tasted her fingers by accident and heard her breath hitch. He had to swallow the capsule without water, but it didn’t matter; this was playing out perfectly. _Easy peasy lemon squeezy._ She was putty in his hands now. With the second pill, he intentionally licked her index finger, lazily sucking on it for the time she would let him. Her mouth fell open just slightly; she was absolutely transfixed.

 

The only problem was, he was too. The way she was looking at him, a mix of lust and something else he couldn’t quite place, pulled on something strange in his chest. As her hand moved to cup his swollen jaw, he kissed her palm before he could stop himself.

 

He kept looking at her open lips, wanting to lean in and see how their taste measured up to her fingers, wanting to know just how much she’d bleed if he bit her hard enough. She was rubbing his jaw now, and _shit_ —it felt good. It felt really, really good. He shut his eyes and let a low purr escape his throat. _This isn’t how my game is supposed to go. I need to kill her._

 

But then he reminded himself that he was playing _her_ game, still, and while it wasn’t exactly what he wanted, he could enjoy himself.

 

The morphine was starting to kick now, too, so her face began to take on a dreamy expressionist quality, hazy and ill defined, but still beautiful. The pain in his ribs slowly began to morph from a constant sharp sensation every time he breathed to a dull throb and then, finally, to nothing at all. He sighed in relief as he looked at her, his head lolling back out of her soft caress and into the corner of the wall.

 

“Thank you, Dr. Quin-zelll,” he sighed, letting the morphine lift him on an exquisite high. “Such an angel you are. You’ve even got a gold halo, pretty girl.”

 

“No-no problem, Mr. J,” she stammered, quickly standing again. “I’ll be back again tomorrow after our session to give you a couple more. Just try to relax for the rest of the day.”

 

“Will do, doc,” he replied, already lost to the high. “Will do.”

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to give my sincerest thanks to everyone who has bookmarked, commented and/or given kudos to this story. Y'all are the real MVPs; thank you so much. :)

“He’s at Arkham, isn’t he?”   
  
It wasn’t a question, not really. Bruce could tell that Barbara knew from the very moment she opened her eyes. He swallowed hard. “Yes.”

 

In the long silence that followed, he studied her. She was so talented, so young, and now…now she was paralyzed from the waist down, all because of the Joker. Bruce’s veins surged with a hot, vicious fury. He promised Jim that he’d protect his daughter, and he failed.

 

“I’m sorry, Barbara.”

 

She turned away from him, exhaled a shaky breath. “He’s going to get out again, Bruce. You know he is.”

 

He sat next to her, tucked a stray lock of red hair behind her ear. “Not this time. I won’t let him.”

 

“But you can’t make any promises, right?” She gave him a sad smile then, one that didn’t reach her eyes. His chest hurt; she’d lost her faith in him. “I know that you’ll try.”

 

Later that night, Bruce sat at his monitors and watched the Joker pull against his restraints, foaming at the mouth and screaming like a rabid dog. Bruce watched as the guards came in and beat him in the stomach, nausea burning through him as he remembered the rasping cackles of the Joker as he repeatedly struck him with his own crowbar. He heard the young doctor’s panicked screeches, noted with curiosity when her small hand gently touched the Joker’s forehead and he recoiled. It was a small movement, so small that Bruce wasn’t sure if it was just a glitch in the video at first, but he caught it. He paused the video at this moment, observing the peculiar expression on his enemy’s face.

 

“Now that _is_ a frightening picture, Master Bruce.”

 

“Afraid of clowns, Alfred?”

 

“Only those named Pennywise, sir.”

 

Was that…fear in the Joker’s eyes? _No._ Bruce shook his head. He recognized fear, and whatever was on the Joker’s face wasn’t it. He yawned, rolling his shoulders, and sat back in his chair. _Who are you?_

Most of the rest of the camera footage was of Dr. Harleen Quinzel’s office, and his brows furrowed as he saw her sigh and pull out a bottle of pills from her purse. He pressed a button on his keyboard, causing the image of the pill bottle to magnify. Damn it; the label had long been scratched off. _What are you doing, Quinzel?_

He felt the dark anger in him start to rise when he saw the young doctor enter into Arkham’s office and request that the Joker be let out of his straitjacket while in his cell.

 

Dr. Arkham barely lifted his eyes from the paperwork on his desk. “No, no, no. No. I’m afraid that’s too steep of a request for now, Dr. Quinzel. He’s far too dangerous to let off his leash. Dr. Cushing just sent me his two-week notice because of the broken nose incident and I’m in the process of scrambling to replace him. And that all happened when the Joker was in restraints! Do you know how difficult it is to find a good E.R. doctor who’s desperate enough to work here? It’s next to impossible. No, Dr. Quinzel. He stays in the straitjacket. He’s lucky I haven’t had him muzzled after he bit that guard today. ”

 

“He only bit the guard because the guard smacked him in the stomach!”

 

“Which he did to protect you, Dr. Quinzel. You called the guards in, remember?”

 

“Look,” she said, letting out a clearly exasperated breath. “I know he’s dangerous. I know that. But you have him in that thing _all day_ and he can’t breathe properly. I’m concerned that he’s going to come down with pneumonia, especially after what happened with the guards today.”

 

Dr. Arkham sat forward in his plush leather chair, leaning on his elbows. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Miss Quinzel. Why are you so worried about him?”

 

Bruce couldn’t see Quinzel’s face, but he could hear the anger in her voice. “ _Because he’s my patient._ ”

 

Arkham’s watery eyes shifted back to his paperwork. “Well, now, you’ll see how quickly that can change.”

 

“Are you firing me?”

 

“No, Dr. Quinzel. I’m simply telling you to do your job.”

 

“Do my job? _Do my job?_ When I arrived to my appointment this morning, I walked in to see my patient with a bloody mouth and new bruises on his face, speaking like he’d been roofied!” She was shouting now, and Bruce felt that uncomfortable itch at the back of his brain again. “I know he’s done terrible things, and that he’s dangerous, but we’re _brutalizing_ him, Dr. Arkham. It’s—it’s not right. It’s _sick_.”

 

“You know, Dr. Leland has spoken very highly of you, but at the moment I can’t seem to grasp why. Are you implying that someone has been abusing our favorite green-haired patient?”

 

“I’m not implying anything, Dr. Arkham; I’m _saying_ that’s what’s going on! That, among other things.”

 

“But you have no proof beyond some bruises and the understandable side effects of sedatives.”

 

“That’s not true—”

 

“This is a manipulation tactic, Dr. Quinzel; he’s more than likely harming himself. But I’ll have him transported to the padded room, since you are so concerned for his wellbeing. I didn’t take you for such a bleeding heart; I must say, I’m a little disappointed.”

 

The footage cut off after that. Bruce crossed his arms, frowning at the monitors in front of him. Something wasn’t right. He decided that he’d have to pay another visit to the young Dr. Quinzel. He cleared his throat, listened to his heartbeat thunder in his ears.

 

“You should get some sleep, sir. Your presence is expected at the board meeting in the morning.”

 

“Cancel it, Alfred. I’m heading to Arkham tomorrow.”

 

“Sir?”

 

“I need to make sure my donations are being used in the way they were intended.”

 

“Master Bruce, are you sure that’s wis—”

 

“Just do it, Alfred. Please.”

 

“Of course, Master Bruce.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you shitting me?”

 

“No, Jonny. The Bat turned up at the lady’s apartment only a few minutes after Ramirez broke in. Damn near killed the kid, too.”

 

“ _I’ll_ kill the kid.” Frost was fuming. His plan had been to strong-arm the Boss’s new doctor, threaten her into giving the Boss a weapon and a cellphone, while some of lower-level guys got themselves locked up Arkham. Frost cursed at himself; he should’ve known not to send a green kid to do a job like that. The plan was irrevocably fucked now, and the Bat was probably on to them, too. “Did Ramirez have anything that might’ve tipped Batman off?” he asked through clenched teeth.

 

“Kid’s pretty beat up right now so it’s hard to understand him, but he did manage to say the Bat didn’t find anything.”

 

_Like hell._   


Batman always found something, always. The doctor’s apartment was probably littered with mic bugs and cameras now. They couldn’t touch her; she was fucking radioactive.

  
Frost slammed his fist against the table. The Boss was going to kill him when he got out—and he _was_ going to get out. In a day, a month, a year, ten years, didn’t matter. He’d get out eventually and kill Frost for taking so damn long to spring him, give him a nice new smile that’d go from ear to ear and make a tie out of his tongue to set an example. _What a shitty way to die._

 

His mind drifted towards Shelly, his ex-wife, and their two kids. The Boss would probably hurt them, too. Frost put his face in his hands.

 

Of all the crime bosses in Gotham, why’d he have to work for the fucking _Joker_?

 

Oh, that’s right—because the Joker paid the best money, kept around the sexiest girls in his clubs (and guys too; the Joker didn’t discriminate), and sold the best drugs on the market. And Frost got to inhale all the hedonism, all the sin, douse himself in it like he was bathing in the world’s finest, most expensive champagne. High off of Gotham’s purest cocaine, he fucked in the hottest orgies in the VIP sections of all the Boss’s clubs as thousands of hundred dollar bills rained down from the ceiling. There was always a reward for a job well done, a celebration after a turf takeover, and a good night of screwing with the Bat. It was the shit dreams were made of.

 

And all the while the Boss would sit there, dress shirt open and multiple gold chains clanging against his alabaster skin as he whooped and spun his cane like some kind of green-haired Caligula, drinking in all the drugs and fucking and alcohol with his wild eyes but never taking part, except for maybe setting piles of money on fire when shit wasn’t crazy enough for his liking.

  
The Boss was fucking insane, but he knew how to party just as well as he knew how to painfully maim and murder someone. The King of Gotham, the Clown Prince of Crime—the Joker, his batshit _boss_.

 

“I’m so fucked, Rocco.”

 

“Cheer up, Jonny. That whack job Panda is in the process of gettin’ his ass thrown in Arkham as we speak.”

 

_That_ wasn’t reassuring. Panda Man was almost as crazy as the Boss, but with less than a quarter of his intelligence. He could follow simple instructions, though, and always kept a joyful disposition while tearing people to ribbons with his AK-47, which is probably why the Boss liked keeping him around. The guy was essentially a retarded, bloodthirsty Rottweiler.

 

Frost felt hammers slamming against his temples. He hoped that the Boss would be merciful; he _did_ have periods of lucidity where he acted almost…normal. Reasonable, even.

 

Frost groaned. Fat fucking chance at that.

 

He felt tears stinging the corners of his eyes and gulped. _Shelly, I’m so sorry._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Harleen thought her heart was going through burst through her chest. She couldn’t believe what she’d just done. Seducing a guard for access to the security footage and camera controls, illegally entering her patient’s cell and giving him an unprescribed narcotic—had she lost her fucking mind?

 

But she felt proud, too, she couldn’t deny it. She went around behind Dr. Leland’s sadistic back and helped her patient. She had done the right thing; she was convinced of it. She saw the security tapes and knew that they had been tampered with, too, saw the minuscule jump in time between one clip and the next—she’d modified the footage of her stay with the Joker in just the same way, only she was more precise; years of watching her con artist of a father turned out to have its perks once in a while—and she knew that someone else had paid her patient visit before she did. Now the only problem lay in finding out whom it was. The guard was bought; his only loyalty appeared to lie in money and/or pussy. She offered him the latter, but she knew that someone had already offered him the former, and he wasn’t about to give him or her up.

 

The Joker was about to tell her who it was, too, before he curled in on himself. _I could always ask him again._ But would he tell her now? And _should_ she ask him? She was playing such a dangerous game already, and she didn’t like the thought of giving him even more power in whatever fucked up tango they were dancing in. The moment he started licking her fingers already crossed a line that she wasn’t sure she could return from. Her spine tingled, but whether it was in fear or excitement, she wasn’t sure.

 

Still, despite her lack of proof, she felt emboldened after her visit with him, and she even went to Dr. Arkham, informing him as much as she safely could about what she thought was happening in his asylum. She couldn’t tell him that she’d seen the tapes without putting her own head on the chopping block, of course, but she _could_ tell him her suspicions, nudge him in the right direction. That would be easy enough to do.

 

The old bastard was stubborn, though; she needed to be more obvious with her tactics. He eventually relented when she lightly touched his gnarled, wrinkled hands and batted her eyelashes at him. She trailed her fingers up his arm; light enough to be just a friendly tease, but hard enough to be promise of something intimate, if he needed a little more convincing. He didn’t; the fact that a woman had even deigned to touch him willingly nearly gave him a heart attack. The Joker would be released from his straitjacket while in his cell, and Dr. Arkham would review the security tapes himself. She could barely hold in her smirk; men were such simple creatures.

 

Her panic only began to set in when she walked back to her office. Her espresso-fueled body was starting to crash now, but her anxiety kept her wired. She had no doubt that Leland would already know about her visit to Dr. Arkham; she’d make her life a living hell for it, too, Harleen was sure of that.

 

Her shirt had long since become soaked in sweat. If anyone found out about what she’d done for the Joker today, she’d not only be fired, she’d be blacklisted _forever_. No book deal, no money; it’d be over. Her professional career would end before it’d ever really began, and her mother and sister would have to welcome back a criminal and disgraced doctor into their miserable, dying home. She’d fail them both.

 

With a quaking breath, Harleen loosened her bun, ran her fingers through her hair. She hoped that the blowjob she’d given the idiot guard would forever buy his silence, but she had a feeling that she’d have to be paying him more friendly visits in the weeks to come. She ran to her trashcan, her stomach storming with queasiness and anxiety, when she heard a knock at her door.

 

“Harleen?” Good Lord, it was Tony; her nausea got worse.

 

“I’m a little busy right now, Tony.”

 

“I just wanted to check in on you. I heard about what happened today and I—Jesus, Harleen, are you all right?”

 

He stepped in and ran over to her when he saw that she was bent over her trash bin. His hand pressed on her back and she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming.

“Yes,” she lied. She was the opposite of all right. All she wanted to do was take a shower and crawl out of her skin. This close, though, Tony’s expensive cologne filled her nose, and she felt desire stirring low in her stomach. She looked at him, his high cheekbones and hazel eyes and sandy brown hair, and she wanted to kiss him.

 

It’s not that she thought he was attractive—although he _was,_ if in an objective, boring sort of way—it’s that after all the bullshit she put up with today, she needed to be fucked, and fucked hard. It was the only thing that’d set her whirling head straight. _And,_ she thought to herself, _if I look at him from the right angle, he could be mildly interesting._

 

“You know what, Tony? Why don’t we head back to my place?”

 

“…What? You mean it?”

 

_God, you’re thick._

 

She didn’t answer him, just grabbed his tie and pulled her towards him. The kiss was boring and gentle, and her thoughts strayed to red lips and green hair. _You can’t be thinking about him like this._

 

But no matter what she told herself, no matter how hard she fought against it, she kept imagining that Tony’s rough hands were the Joker’s, even as he did his best to fuck her raw like she begged him to. It was no use; she couldn’t get her patient out of her head. He was a tumor in her brain, and like a tumor, he was beginning to metastasize.

 

She kept thinking about how his cheek felt against her palm, warm with hot blood running underneath the skin; he felt… _real_. In that moment, he was an actual person to her, a human being, a _man_ , and not just some monster who blew up banks to get his rocks off—although she never forgot that he _was_ that, too. She thought about the sound he made when she touched him, something in between a growl and a purr, anger and relief, and she wanted to know what _other_ kinds of sounds he made when he was by himself…or in someone else’s bed. She wondered how his tongue would feel against hers, and if he knew how to please a woman with it, and not just suck on her fingers.

 

She found herself getting wet at the thought of making him groan and twist his white hands in her bed sheets. It didn’t take a genius to realize that he liked— _needed_ —to be in control of everything, and she wanted to pull the thread loose, watch him squirm and pant out her name as if it were the only word he knew.

 

She moaned when Tony finally hit that spot she wanted, whispered “J” to herself, and kept whispering his name until she finally came, imaging all the while that the pistoning cock inside of her belonged to a man with silver teeth and a wicked smile.

 

_You’re losing it, Harleen._

 

When they were done, she gave Tony a kiss on the cheek, and politely told him to leave.

 

“You’re…you’re kicking me out?”

 

“Uhm. Yeah.”

 

“But—but you liked it.”

 

“And?”

 

“Christ, Harleen. I just. Fuck, I don’t know. I thought—”

 

“Spit it out, Tony.”

 

“Look, I know you don’t want me to stay, and I get it. It’s just that…I really, really like you, Harleen. Could…could I take you out on a date this weekend?”

 

“No.”

 

His face fell, this tall man with hair on his chest and dimples in his cheeks. A handsome man; a good man, although a dull one. He wasn’t good like Batman or handsome like her patient. Really, he was a giant teddy bear that’d been pining after her ever since they met, and she just fucking crushed him. He wanted her, and he was everything that she _should’ve_ wanted—why couldn’t she just like him in return?

 

“I…I see.” He cleared his throat, scratched the back of his neck. “Well, then…could we maybe do this again sometime?”

 

She thought about it for a moment. It’d be a safe way to live out her fucked up fantasies; it’s not like she could go and actually have sex with the Joker.

 

Or could she?

 

He wasn’t in his straitjacket anymore…

 

She slapped herself, heard Tony ask her what was wrong, if she was okay. Annoying, annoying, annoying.

 

She wasn’t okay; she felt like something had broken inside of her, cracked forever and pieces lost and she had no way to fix it.

 

_You’re losing your mind. The man is your patient and a mass-murderer. He’d kill you the first chance he got. It’s bad enough that you’re fantasizing about him._

_Stop._

_It._

“I’ll call you, Tony,” was all she said in response before she shut the door on him.

 

She had a lot to think about.


End file.
